


Day 5. Exhausted

by Munnin



Series: Fictober [5]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 03:14:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16188908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: Not all Jedi are suited to war, but some are born to it.





	Day 5. Exhausted

**Author's Note:**

> Continuing from [Day 2. Spell](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153814).

They called us the padawans of war. 

The generation before us were trained for gentler arts. For diplomacy and kinder days. When Jedi kept the peace, rather than enforcing it. For them, lightsabre training was as much an aesthetic art as a defensive one. 

We were taught leadership, battle tactics. How to deploy troops and read the landscape of strategic advantage. Not just how to fly but how to fight ship to ship, how to command a space battle. 

Those who came to knighthood in the storm of the Clone Wars were judged by battle prowess and their combat records. Their skill and courage, their fortitude of Flesh, and Spirit. Insight came not from orderly trials but from the rigors of war. From blood and victory and defeat. 

And from necessity. 

Padawans were being promoted younger and sooner than before. Not because the Order needed knights, but because the Republic needed Generals. The war had claimed so many Jedi. More needed to be trained, be send out into the field as swiftly as possible.

Master Ralin was ill-suited for battle. It exhausted her, body and spirit. She had always had a gentle heart, better suited to raising younglings than leading clones in war. A heart that was weakening as hardship weighted her down. Her long hair seemed greyer after every engagement. 

For my part, I took to battle swiftly. Far, far better than Master Ralin was comfortable with. It was as if I’d been born to war. No meditation brought the clarity I felt while wielding my sabre. No adage of Master Yoda compared to the singing of my blood and the hum of the Force aligned to my actions. 

I felt no darkness in it. No lust for blood or hate for my advisory. Only balance in motion, the rightness of action. 

It worried my master. I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me. I was not the Jedi she wanted me to be. 

I will be a Jedi of the new age. 

And that frightened her.

I’d known Master Ralin all my life. All of it I remembered anyway. And the years seemed to hang heavier on her every day. The Jedi Order she knew was changing, the galaxy was changing. And both were becoming something she neither recognised or liked. 

The dust of this Force-forsaken world didn’t help. Everything looked grey under a layer of it.

“I have been thinking, my padawan.” She started as we helped an injured clone into the transport. “It is time we returned to the Temple.” 

I opened my mouth to protest but shut it again. Talking back was one of my greatest failings. Instead I took a deep breath and centred myself, reviewing my words before I spoke them. “If you say so, Master. But I believe I would better serve the Republic here, in the field.” 

“It is to that end we should return, my Padawan.” She sighed tiredly. “It is time you were put forward for Knighthood.”

As a Jedi knight I would be able to lead a detachment of troopers on my own. And she would be able to return to the safety and familiarity of temple life.

I lowered my head. “I’m honoured you think me ready.” But another thought caught at the edges of my perception. “Master, this wouldn’t have anything to do with my tribulation, would it?”

She looked away, not meeting my eye. 

Since I was a child, I’ve fallen sick, every three years. The first time had come as a shock – the fever that overtook me without apparent cause, the convulsions, the lucid dreams and terrible visions.

The healers warned I might not survive. That they had never seen anything like it. After eight days, I recovered, the illness passing as abruptly as it had come. The mystery worried them. But back then, I was too young to understand. 

The second time, to the very day, they knew what to do. And by then, I was learning to notice more about the way people acted around me. Ice baths kept my fever from spiking too high, isolation from the rest of the temple during the maelstrom of my visions. My darkness was kept safe from the tainting my fellow padawans. Only Master Ralin stayed with me, watching from the other side of the thick-walled room, trying to meditate as I wept from the pain of it.

And every three years since. To the hour. 

I was due to go through it again soon. I could feel it without ever checking the crono.

And Master Ralin wanted me safely back in the temple before it happened. 

But was it for her sake or mine?

The war, however, had other plans. Diverted to answer a distress call from damaged Republic medical frigate, we found ourselves in the jaws of a trap. 

“Separatist gunships.” The Reticent’s captain announced over comms. “They’ve just dropped out of hyperspace. Port and starboard. They have us flanked.”

“Scramble the fighters.” I called, squeezing Ralin’s shoulder before I ran for the hangerbay. It was a sign of affection she wouldn’t normally have allowed but the sadness I saw in her as we were diverted from our trip back to the Temple troubled me. 

And I had a strange feeling I might not see her again.

The mission was simple enough on the surface of it – keep the vulture droids off the escape pods long enough for our ship to collect them, then get the hell out of there. The clone pilots at my wing were some of the finest in the fleet and I had great trust in them. 

I twisted and banked, laser fire missing the flanks of my ship by less than a hand’s breadth. My R2 unit beeped obscenities at me but I only laughed. We were in the flow of the Force now and everything felt calm and right. I flipped the little starfighter like a youngling doing cartwheels, firing with my eyes half closed. I could feel the shape of the battle, as if I was outside myself. As if I was watching it unfold through the holoprojector on the Reticent’s control deck.

And then something changed. Some shadow in the force passed over me and I felt my heart clench. It wasn’t the tribulation. It was too soon. But something dark and cold rippled through the Force, leaving me gasping. 

The tide of battle shifted and I fought to regain control as I felt my pilots die around me. 

My comm crackled into life with Master Ralin’s voice. She sounded rattled. Had she felt it too? “We have the last of the escape pods in our sights, get back to the ship.” 

“All wings, return to the Reticent.” I felt more than heard my pilots’ assent as I curved around to give them cover fire. The swarm of vulture droids tried to put themselves between us and the Reticent. 

Two starfighter broke off from the pack of returning pilots, aligning themselves to increase to cover. I knew who they were without looked for call-signs. Gel and Toth, my squad captain and lieutenant. 

“I said in, boys!” I called, twisting the ship to cut off a darting attack from above. 

“First out, last in.” I could hear the smile in Gel’s voice. “You know that’s how we work.”

And then I saw it. A third Separatist ship coming out of hyperspace and already releasing fighters. The shadow of cold passed over me again. 

“GO!” I yelled to the Reticent, punching it to head off the new wave of attackers. “Get into hyperspace and get clear.”

“We’re not leaving without you, Commander.” It was Reticent’s captain, her voice steady but tight.

“Yes, you are.” I answered back. “Drop me a hyperspace ring and go. I’ll make my own way. Gel and Toth, get in.” I knew they were closer to the ship than me. That they’d have time before the jump coordinates made it to the hyperdrive. 

“Make that three rings.” Gel answered confidently, following me down the throat of the oncoming swarm.

As the Reticent became a blur, I heard Master Ralin’s voice. “May the Force be with you.”

After that, there was nothing but the fight.

**Author's Note:**

> Josh, you beautiful man. Thank you.


End file.
